Taktika was just mentioned favorably in a front page article on Boardgame News today. Sweet!
If you’ve been eyeing it for a while (or saw the beautiful photo that accompanies the article) now’s the time to break down and get yourself a copy. You deserve it!
Back in the earlier Internet days, about a dozen ago (that’s 1996-97-ish, for those of you who are either math-addled or from the future), I had fancied myself a bit of a web game developer. I had a website with couple medium-sized multiplayer online games, your standard strategic exploration and combat and tech tree stuff, one about cavemen and one about nanotech spaceship-clouds. Maybe had fifteen thousand registered users, give or take, which for the time was pretty decent. It was all old school play-by-web, with frames and javascript and database-driven Perl CGI backends and whatnot – all pretty gnarly and poorly maintained, and it all eventually collapsed under its own weight after I lost interest after a business deal fell through and I started to focus more on my day job, which was basically the same thing, only for clients who actually paid us.
I’d never try to resurrect those exact same games – the designs were clunky, the code wasn’t anything to be proud of, and the old player base is long, long gone – but I’ve still got design documents in various stages of decay sitting around for a good half dozen totally decent web-based games that could be thrown together, given a bit of care and time. A little bit of playtesting and polishing here, a chunk of content generation there, spray the Rails hose at it, and voila. Sounds reasonable enough. Unfortunately, as a freelance developer, overbooked stage performer, and relatively new father, most of my billable and non-billable hours are spoken for, and most of my game design time is directed towards the tabletop side of things. Also, the landscape is much different now than it was then – there are hundreds of browser-based games out there, many of them possessing much greater polish and love than I could ever hope to give them, unless I quit my life or something. Still, the projects are on the stack, and someday, they might get gotten to.
But, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about something that I don’t think I’ve seen yet, and if I’m not able to make it happen right now, I’d love to see someone else try it out. So, off into the collective consciousness we go: I’d like to see a set of web-based games that are totally different play-wise, theme-wise, and other-wise, but all their players operated on the same set of data that described the world, and the resources in it. So, say, you’d have one set of players flying around, mining asteroids and fighting aliens and space pirates in your typical 4x/Elite-style galactic trader game, another set of players hacking away at monsters in a fantasy world based dungeon crawl, another bunch of players fighting over city blocks and illicit businesses in a gang war game, and maybe another set doing something interesting in some stock market financial simulation thing. Or whatever.
But! When players do stuff in one of the games, it doesn’t just affect their game world, it becomes part of all the others, too – all the games work on one big database, but they all provide radically different views and available actions on that world data. So, your gangland activity in one game generates the monsters that the dungeon crawlers fight. The trading of goods in starports across the galaxy and the selling of loot in medieval towns are reflected in the stock exchange in the financial sim. The players that become leaders of the Mages’ Guild in one game are portrayed as mob bosses in another. A shrewd investor cashing in a bunch of hot commodities in one world causes a medical emergency for an outpost on the galactic rim. You could even hook generated game data into real-world sources like weather patterns, the actual stock markets, RSS feeds, twitter chatter, all kinds of fun stuff. There are so many ways to weave totally different game worlds together, and the really fun part is, you really wouldn’t have to tell anyone about it. Players on one web game are the alien menace in another, and nobody knows except the admins – until the day that the master plan leaks, which leads to all kinds of awesome.
Sure, there are some technical and design challenges involved with a scheme like this, but in my mind, totally worthwhile ones. Who knows – maybe this is already happening, and the veil hasn’t been lifted yet. And I guess I’ve blown my cover already, so if I ever do get around to doing something like this, it’ll come as no surprise. Still, potentially fun times ahead. Keep watching the skies.
Hey, do you want to win a free copy of Coalescence? I know you do. Well, how about that, and a free copy of Honeypot, to boot? There is no resisting a deal as sweet as that, right? So, what you need to do is get on over to BoardGameGeek, and check out the contest I just posted up there.
All you need to do is identify these nine stellar objects, and tell us what they are, and if you’re the first one to get them all right, the tubes are yours. Head on over for the official scoop!
Over the weekend, I realized an important aspect of suits in game design. They restrict options and therefore increase tension.
Imagine a game of Lost Cities where all of the cards were of the same suit and they could be played on any expedition. Now instead of a 20% chance of drawing the suit you need, you have a 100% chance. The discarding aspect of the game would be pretty pointless. In short, all of the interesting decisions go out the window.
This seems pretty obvious in retrospect. In fact, I’ve added suits before to games for that very reason. I guess I was just oblivious with my perpetually undone game, Venture Forth, which was lacking suits. The game gave you lots of options, but ultimately felt flat. I added suits yesterday and all of a sudden the tension in the game started to come out! Behold the power of suits!
Last night at our design meeting, I mentioned a game that I thought related to the topic at hand. We were discussing designing a game with a space ship control panel, when I remembered this game called Wormhole that had that very thing.
According to the entry on BoardGameGeek.com:
‘Wormhole’ by www.worldworksgames.com is a tabletop space combat game which promises an affordable yet paradigm shifting gaming experience. Taking the “virtual board game” concept to the bleeding edge; instead of forcing overpriced lead miniatures on players Wormhole offers a complete fleet of high quality 3-D models that you print and build from your home printer. This feature alone gives players the opportunity to build massive fleets without breaking the bank.
Wormhole promises “cinematic” space combat with visual style and presentation not yet seen in the genre. Rules are easy to understand but offer a scaling level of depth for a variety of play styles. Wormhole also introduces an interactive damage and orders system which removes heavy book-keeping tasks and replaces it with a “control panel-like” interface (you feel absolutely in control, barking orders to your fleet). A number of unique gaming elements conspire to make Wormhole a truly immersive and completely original gaming experience.
Notice how in the top right picture how the panel is modular!
I don’t know if it is just the lighting, but this looks awesome!
And here are the ships you actually play the game with.
After a hiatus, we returned to meeting last night. One activity we partook in was to come up with lists of board game titles. We then exchanged them and tried to describe the game that came to mind. Below is the list of game titles that you may one day see at a game store near you:
My first full fledged attempt to design a game started about two years ago. It began when I read a description of a game on some webpage. The game was Light Speed by Cheapass Games. The game sounded awesome. So awesome that on my lunch break that was all I talked about. In my mind I had this image of an epic space game that took place in real time but had elements of strategy and lots of theme. There would be abilities, commanders, and many kinds of space ships that had different capabilities. The description did not talk about these things but I knew that a game this cool would have to have this stuff. I went to my local game store later that night and what I saw hanging up in a little zip lock bag shattered my dream of an epic real-time space battle game. I bought it, took it home, and played it with my wife. It was certainly not the game I wanted it to be. For what it is I think it is a cool little game. Just not the game I had imagined.
The next day at lunch I told my friend all about the true nature Light Speed. That’s when Kendrick suggested that I design the game that I had described to him. What a simple idea, design a game. I knew exactly what I wanted it to be like. I had already tinkered with one other board game design, and I had a growing collection of 3 modern board games in my collection. So how hard could it be? Well that was about two years ago and its still in development. But my game collection is now about 100.
It only took me about 3 days to get the first version of the game ready to play test. I had two very close friends that I had been playing games with for years. So I enlisted them to be my play testers. Our first play test of the game was a lot of fun. At the time I thought it went great. The game had many issues, but it worked. My two friends play tested the game with the same competitiveness reserved for tournament games of Magic where there is money on the line. I later realized that this is not the best way to play test your games.
I had the basic design for the game so I started to develop it. Of course, the more we played the game, the better we got at it. This meant the game got easier so to keep it interesting, I added more elements to the game. After about 200 plays, many revisions and tons of additions to the game I believed it to be done. My friends thought it was awesome! It was a game that required both speed and strategy to play. It was epic. It was thematic. What I failed to realize though, was that I had inadvertently designed a game that only we could play. We thought it was easy to play, and for us it was. We had over 200 games worth of practice. But it was way too much for a beginner to learn. I could teach it well enough but most people thought it had too many things going on at once, so I put the game on hold.
A few weeks ago I decided that I was going to dedicate the next 8 months to working on expansions to my game Taktika. Even with that goal, for some reason all I can think about is working on Galaxy in Flames again. My goal for the rest of this month is to finish developing GIF. Dan and I play tested the newest version of it Tuesday night and I think it went very well. I’m excited about the game again. Maybe I can even finish it this time.
Tonight we will be able to continue with out weekly design meetings on our regular night and regular time. I’m stoked!
Exceptions
I have been playtesting Stellar Underworld at my local game store and with other gamers here and there. At one of those playings, I had one especially “thorough” playtester who offered more advice than I expected. I knew we were in for a rough game when he questioned my decision to include almost every aspect of the game. Why do we start with two of these? Why not three? Why not have an ability to do this? or that? Now keep in mind, a lot of these comments were before I was even finished explaining the rules. I was getting frustrated pretty quickly, but once the game got going, it settled down a bit. After the game, and after I had a few days to think about his comments, I realized that there were a lot of kernels of truth in what he had to say. The thing that stuck with me the most when he rolled his eyes a lot when I explained certain rules. To be more precise, it was the exceptions to those rules that were the problem. Thats when I realized that my game was full of exceptions.
For example:
There are probably more, but these are the ones that jumped out at me. Exceptions are ok in small numbers, but in larger quantities it makes the game more difficult to follow for new players. My goal now is to weed out some of these exceptions, while retaining their original purpose. So far, I’m having luck at some of them, but others are kind of difficult. It is a three way battle between simplicity, gameplay, and theme. Hopefully, they’ll all be winners, and I know the game will be better for me having taken the time to put this problem under the microscope.
Lately, our meeting schedule has been in flux, so last night when Ian and Marc came over, it was a nice treat.
Taktika
Ian discussed his latest scenario for Taktika. It involves a special disk known as the Glyph of Protection. The rules were simple and straight-forward. We recommended that he publish it on the web.
Coalescence
Marc showed us some really neat looking rings that he is using for his game Coalescence. He has painted them in such a way that, depending on the number of players, the rings can be used as different colored player pieces.
Dice Game
Marc showed us a quick two player dice game that he whipped together. It had a hand drawn board that kept track of the score. The players rolled the dice simultaneously, then selected one secretly to withhold. Depending on the dice left over, you could claim a spot in a column on the score chart. The earlier you get into a column, the more points. I think he’s on to something here, and I applaud any new non-yahtzee-like dice games.
Space Port
Space Port has shed its placeholder name and now dons the title Stellar Underworld. It connotes the seedy side of space life and has a unique ring to it. Just be thankful I didn’t put Galaxy or Galactic in the title! We’ve had enough of those words in game titles these past few years.In this latest version, we used new sector cards. The sectors are now split into three distinct groups each with their own deck. This allows players to have access to the sectors of one particular group if they want to use it as a part of their strategy. This was initially done to allow guaranteed access to sectors that desired contraband. Since several other mechanics revolved around contraband (Black Markets, Inspections) I didn’t want players to have to wait for the luck of the draw to utilize it. Besides putting contraband-loving sectors into one group, I also distinguished the groups by tiering their production. Sectors now either produce two, three, or four cubes based on their type. Overall, I think this system work great.
This was Marc’s first game, excluded some earlier proof-of-concept mock up. He said that the game had a daunting feeling to it when he started. Every player is given the same 16 cards, and each can only be used once. He felt that is was a difficult decision to play any particular card since he wasn’t sure how valuable any given card was. Also, the first turn gives you so many options that don’t pay out until later turns. After his actions started getting him some points after a few rounds, he said it started to click for him.
In the end, the score was 10 (Ian), 11 (Dan), 12 (Marc). I was very pleased with the way the game was played. Everyone was into it until the end. I’m stoked!
I’ve been revamping Space Port lately to fix some issues with the game. Actually, I’m revamping it to allow for more design space to fix some issues. Here are the changes:
StarCreds
The first change I made was to the currency system. In this universe, I used StarCreds as the money of choice. It was a name made up during one of our improv game design sessions and has been a running joke ever since. The problem with StarCreds is that is just a simple system. You gain StarCreds through certain actions, then you use them to pay for other actions. Basically, they function just like any other currency. As I was looking over ways to create more design space, I saw that the StarCred wasn’t pulling its own weight. It functioned as just a number. It was always just in a range of zero to some unbound amount. My idea spurred from the desire to inject more information into this mechanism. What if the used StarCreds didn’t go away, but just stayed there in a “used” state? What if there was a limit on the number of StarCreds you could own? Bam! That’s when it hit me.
To make sense of what I was about to do, I rethemed the StarCreds from currency to Henchman. Henchmen are just like StarCreds except they have a binary state: active or inactive. When you would gain a StarCred, you now activate a Henchman. When you would pay a StarCred, you now use (deactivate) a Henchman. New actions also have arisen such as recruiting a henchman, which is just taking a Henchman from the supply. New design space has arisen from this all over the place. There is now a limit on how many Henchmen you can have active at a time (Before there was no limit on StarCreds). You can increase that limit by recruiting (a whole new area to design with). Timing (my favorite game mechanic) comes to the limelight as now it becomes important when you gain a massive influx of “currency” because sometimes you have the room for it (a lot of inactivate henchmen), and other times you don’t (only one is inactivate). Also, the main use of StarCreds was to pay for loading goods, trading, and “borrowing” ships. Instead of paying for it, you now just have your Henchmen do the job for you!
StarCreds acted as another way to gain points at the end of the game. Each two StarCreds was worth one point. Gaining those points just happened, and there was no real thought involved. This scoring is now replaced by Henchmen which are each worth one point (active or not). To recruit a Henchman, you need you use two other Henchmen while at a Cantina. See what happened there? Using two Henchmen is the same as using two StarCreds. Instead of having two StarCreds left at the end of the game to give you points, you now have to make the decision to buy that point during the game. Of course, recruiting a Henchman has other benefits, so it all fits seamlessly together. Letting the player make the decision is what game play is all about.
Risk Management
Bad stuff can happen to you in the game and you just have to sit and take it. This was brought to my attention by Ian and Drey. We talked about the issue at length, but in the end it boiled down to risk management. I decided that by giving the player the choice to protect themselves at a cost, he can choose the level of risk he wants to take.
Shipping -The game is full of shipping. You can use your ships, neutral ships, and even other player’s ships. Other players don’t like when you use their ship even though the borrower has to pay for the privilege. The problem is that you can’t deny other players from doing this. The solution to this is to modify the cost system of borrowing. Now, the borrowing player uses a certain number of Henchmen. The ship’s owner can now deny them use of his ship by paying an equal amount of Henchmen. The ship’s owner now must manage his Henchmen so that he always has enough to thwart any attempts to hijack his ship. The hijacker must now carefully consider whether or not he wants to try and steal a ship because if his attempt is canceled, then he basically wasted Henchmen as well as a turn. Besides all that, with the new Henchmen mechanism, this oozes with theme.
Contraband - Contraband is the hot ticket item in the game. You never just want to leave it sitting on your ship or in your warehouse because someone else might play an inspection card which discards them. It was discussed that there be a way to pay for more protection for your contraband if you wanted it. So, the new system is that if you have two active Henchmen, your contraband is safe. No payment is necessary. Thematically, they just sit there and guard it. Of course, having your guys locked up to do this means that it will be difficult to pay for other things, but now at least you have a choice. I still need to playtest this a bit more, but I think it is simple enough to work.
Well, we meet tonight and I hope to test this out (and a few other changes). My preliminary testing last night made for some interesting plays, so I’m excited to see how it handles with more players.
